Cited Employees Still At Dcf

State's Child Protection Agency Says It Must Follow Labor Laws

June 17, 2004|By COLIN POITRAS; Courant Staff Writer

When a 16-year-old boy at the state's former Long Lane School grabbed his medications off a nurse's cart and refused to put them back, youth service officer Olardy Alicea slammed him to the ground and put him in a choke hold until he vomited and passed out.

The state Department of Children and Families in 1999 cited Alicea for child abuse and suspended him for 60 days without pay. Alicea appealed the punishment and the state labor board overturned it.

State police arrested Alicea and charged him with felony unlawful restraint and second-degree reckless endangerment, a misdemeanor. He averted prosecution in 2000 by completing a special rehabilitation program for first-time defendants that resulted in the charges being erased.

Alicea is one of 11 DCF employees at the Connecticut Juvenile Training School who are still working with children despite child abuse or child neglect citations, according to DCF officials who released the information in response to inquiries from The Courant.

Connecticut's Child Advocate Jeanne Milstein and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal say evidence that child-care workers are left in their jobs despite findings that they have committed abuse or neglect is another example of the severe problems plaguing the agency. The pair have repeatedly taken DCF to task for mismanaging the Middletown training school and putting children's lives at risk.

``This facility is in a crisis situation,'' Milstein said. ``These allegations are so serious that the attorney general and I have already launched an investigation and it will be concluded rapidly.''

A child-abuse citation -- formally known as a substantiation -- means that a trained DCF investigator found reasonable cause to believe that abuse or neglect took place. Relatively few citations result in criminal charges and a substantiation alone is not grounds for termination, or severe discipline, of a DCF employee.

Two employees, including Alicea, have been cited for physical abuse since 1998. Another male employee was cited for sexual abuse for allegedly having sex with a young girl at Long Lane in 1999. That employee was never suspended or arrested, sources familiar with the incident said, because of a lack of evidence caused by the alleged victim's delay in filing her complaint.

The remaining eight workers were cited for various forms of child neglect, which could include inadequately supervising a child, denying a child proper care or attention, or misapplying a dangerous restraint hold.

National child welfare experts say the agency is exposing itself to potentially costly lawsuits should any of those cited employees be involved in subsequent incidents.

``It puts the state in enormous jeopardy if any kind of subsequent incident occurs, especially if the state agency has actual knowledge of a prior incident,'' said Mark Soler, president of the Youth Law Center based in Washington, D.C., a nonprofit organization that has litigated successfully in 16 states on behalf of children whose rights have been violated in juvenile justice and child welfare systems. The group has also worked in more than 40 states on juvenile justice, child welfare, mental health and education issues.

Soler said that while rules and policies vary from state to state, there is a basic standard in the profession that individuals with a substantiated record of child abuse should not have direct contact with young people.

DCF doesn't tolerate similar behavior at any of the private institutions it utilizes. Private facilities risk losing their licenses if the agency discovers an employee with a child maltreatment record. Moreover, a parent cited for serious abuse or neglect is subject to having a child removed or placed under strict DCF supervision.

DCF officials claim their hands are tied when it comes to policing their own. While the department can dictate the terms of its contracts with private providers, officials say, state employees are protected by due process rights and other considerations provided by the National Labor Relations Act.

``When we get to the labor side, there are certain protections due an employee, and as an employer, we have to abide by that,'' Deputy Commissioner James Carr said.

Connecticut, like most states, uses progressive discipline in cases of child welfare employees cited for abuse or neglect. The fact that some Connecticut employees have managed to stay on the job despite serious allegations against them attests to the strength of the state labor unions here, experts say.

The agency can't discipline an employee merely because of an abuse or neglect substantiation, officials said. Discipline can only be meted out after a separate internal human resources investigation determines that the employee's actions violated the employee's contract. The human resources investigation has a higher standard of evidence and proof.

DCF says it has forced training center employees to leave because of their conduct.